Do it before lower-body exercises.
The gist:
You'll have more power during lower-body moves if you stomp your foot on the ground beforehand.
Expert insight:
When you stomp, your proprioceptors (the sensory receptors that respond to movement) send a message to your brain that it needs to hyper-focus on your feet, explains Colleen Conlon, group fitness instructor at Equinox locations in New York City. In turn, the muscles in the feet and legs tense up.
This helps activate your whole chain so you can better and more safely press out of the bottom of a heavy squat or return to standing during a barbell deadlift, she says.
The bottom line:
Before every set of a lower-body exercise, particularly those with heavy loads, stomp each foot on the ground once. Conlon suggests imagining that you’re trying to split the ground apart with your feet.